Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Badminton Powerhouses-From Hero to Zero

Many countries are currently on the ascent whilst others are descending.Those on the ascent like China,Korea,Japan,Germany,Taiwan,Denmark and Thailand have been quite consistent through the ages and are technologically advanced and progressive societies which do well also in other areas and fields.Countries like England and Sweden have simply lost interest as they are more interested in things European whilst some countries in South East Asia actually chose to decline,as their politicians boast,one must take 2 steps backward in order to be able to move 10 steps forward (but more probably they are actually taking 2 steps backwards and moving 3 steps forward only for decades at a huge cost to the citizens).let's study an example.

In the 70s India was a world power in field hockey but then the government decided to change its policy:
1) It seems that India was powerful only because the team was selected from players from a certain community from a district from the hundreds available in India.It was a close-knit team which functioned effectively as a team.The other communities were unhappy and demanded that this bad practice be stopped, this elitism was no good for national unity and the government had to select a team whose members represented a cross section of society in India. So politics was prioritised over excellence in sports.
2) Indian players had great skills with the hockey stick and dribbled well and was very effective on grass turfs.But then world hockey insisted on artificial turf in internationals and this blunted them as there weren't that many astro-turfs in India and it blunted their superiority in dribbling.the game became more physical and technical and Europeans started to dominate the sport.

The 2 points summarised may not be really accurate accounts and I apologise if it offends anyone but it serves to show how sports can be affected by the political,economic,social and technological environment.
 To those still dreaming of having their cake and eating it at the same time and trying to please everyone and still come up with an excellent formula, I can only say,all the best.
 Americans had a simple formula for achieving excellence,KISS ie.keep it simple,stupid.  

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